How do public folders work in Exchange 2013

exchangeexchange-2013public-folders

I'm studying and testing Exchange 2013, and I'm quite happy to see someone at Microsoft finally decided to move away from the old PF database management and replication which has been a full-scale PITA since Exchange 5 (or even before?). But I'm also quite puzzled by how the new PFs are actually supposed to work, because the documentation could really use some improvement.

Let's start here. Ok, Public Folders are now hosted in mailbox databases, and thus can be protected by a DAG. So far so good. So, you have to create a PF hierarchy mailbox. The documentation says that

Public folder mailboxes contain the hierarchy information for a public folder,
whereas the public folder contains the actual content.
The first public folder mailbox you create will be the master
hierarchy mailbox. Any additional public folder mailboxes you create
will be secondary mailboxes.

What does this mean? It just doesn't seem to make any sense… "the mailboxes contain the hierarchy information, whereas the public folder contains the actual content". Ok, and then where is the PF (and its content) supposed to be stored? And what about that "primary" and "secondary" stuff?

Where are PFs stored? In those very same mailboxes? Can I place different PFs in different mailboxes (and, thus, in different databases)?

This seems indeed to be the case, as the New-PublicFolder cmdlet has a -Mailbox parameter whose purpose seems to be exactly that; so I think I should be able to create multiple PF mailboxes, and then place PFs inside them. But then, what about that quoted statement above?

Is this only a case of bad documentation (as, sadly, seems lately to be increasingly common with Microsoft)?

Best Answer

Massimo,

I had actually wondered the same thing while attending an online "lunch and learn" a while back and was pointed here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/11/08/public-folders-in-the-new-office.aspx

The basic premise from what the guy told me (and the article confirmed) is:

  1. Each public folder mailbox created contains info on the full hierarchy of the PF structure (folders, subfolders, etc.)
  2. A public folder mailbox contains one or more public folder's content.
  3. If the content, let's say "QUOTES" gets too large for the mailbox it is spawned off into a new PF mailbox where it now holds the content and a copy of the hierarchy. The client won't know and doesn't care.

So to answer a few of your questions:

Where is the PF content stored? In one or more PF mailboxes

Can I place different PFs in different mailboxes? Yes

See the link for a better explanation and examples: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/11/08/public-folders-in-the-new-office.aspx

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